As Best She Could

            My mother, Priscilla, did her best with a wrecked heart.  I suspect the damage accumulated over years.

            To begin, she was a darling:  petite, innocent, her face framed by those Shirley Temple curls.  But she was no match for her little brother.  At eighteen months he was bigger than her three-year-old self.  Stronger, too.

            But she was smart.  So smart that her parents had her start kindergarten at four instead of five.  That, I believe, was the decision that defined her life.  How could she have been ready for Oberlin at seventeen?  Shy, and by then convinced she was not pretty, the only thing she knew to do was to try to follow in her older brother’s footsteps.  But chemistry proved too hard—such a blow to her ego—so she followed her older sister’s path, majoring in physical education.

            After graduation she taught for three years in Ashland, Ohio—that first spring interrupted by the untimely death of her younger brother in a pilot training accident.  (Imagine the guilt in grieving for a little brother whom you had often resented and who was your opposite:  big and popular and brash and strong.  And, you felt, your mother’s favorite.  But you were sure you were your father’s favorite.)

            And then she quit teaching to go to graduate school in Chicago.  One day she met a gas station attendant who filled her tank and asked her out.  True, he had only an eighth grade education.  True, his grammar was poor and his language crude.  True, he loved his beer.  But true, he was the first to propose, and with her load of insecurity and fear of becoming an old maid, she said yes.

            The track of her marriage to Ralph was painfully predictable:  four children in the next eight years, grinding poverty and debt, agonizing attempts to make things work, a dawning realization that he was an alcoholic after all and had been cheating on her since the beginning.  Finally, he left for good.  There she was with a newborn, 3-year-old, 6-year-old, and 8-year-old.  But at least she had found a teaching job to support her family.

            Then, that first spring of her single parenthood, her mother—who had been declining for years with Parkinson’s Disease—died.  Her father was bereft.  Every weekend we went to the farm to keep him company.   The following November, he died of a massive heart attack as we children watched Saturday morning cartoons.

            What Priscilla had left were her job and her children.  Her surviving brother and sister, with whom she had never been close, lived far away.  She got most of the furniture from the estate and enough money to pay off the debts her husband had left her as well as get a divorce.  It was a very lonely life, but somehow she managed strenuous years of teaching elementary physical education full-time and being very active in the Methodist Church while raising her four children.    

            Her best years came with her early retirement in 1979 and the fulfillment of her dream: she built an earth contact house on the property her parents had left her.  Long before there was a buzz about carbon footprints, recycling, and a simplified lifestyle she was doing it on her own:  heating with wood, collecting rainwater in a cistern, having a composting toilet, living off her garden.  And doing the historical society work she loved so much, along with singing tenor in church choir and cantata choir and playing bells in bell choir.

            In 2001, she uprooted her lifelong Michigan roots to live on Whidbey Island with her youngest, John.  She spent hours tending her raised bed garden and started her favorite work of clearing brush from the woods.  Financially secure for the first time in her life—her land in Lowell sold for a premium price—she settled into a quiet yet fulfilling life. 

            Even as she faced worsening macular degeneration, survived stomach cancer, and gradually succumbed to Alzheimer’s, she managed to adapt, doing the things she loved as best she could.  Though being moved into Home Place, a specialized care center for persons with dementia, in 2012 was a rude shock to her, she made the best of it and quickly became the darling of the staff.  She walked laps, helped with folding towels and wash cloths, participated on the residents’ council, enjoyed every field trip, and even read to the other residents.

            And then in April 2013, she rapidly declined.  By May, she was very weak and very confused.  Outings and conversations were no longer possible.   Hospice was called in on May 10.  She died peacefully in her sleep on May 16.

            One of the last things she said to me was “Be good!”  Just a few days later, I sat at her bedside to say my final good-bye.  True, she could no longer hear me or the radio’s lovely strains of classical music that kept her company the hours after her death.  But still I had to say it:  “Thank you, Mom.  I know you did the best you could.”